Senior Early Years Practitioner

Senior Early Years Practitioner (Room Lead)

Location:

Exeter Salary: up to £28,000 per annum Contract/

Hours:

Fixed Term/Full Time - 40 hours per week.(12 months) Closing date:
Midnight on the 20th of August 2026 Benefits:

• 25 days annual leaveplusbank holidays
• Professional qualifications and excellent training
• Flexible maternity, adoption, and paternity packages
• Up to 5% employer contributionandlife assurance cover
• Blue Light Card eligibility with discounts at15,000 national retailers

As a Senior Early Years Practitioner, you’ll play a key role in the nursery’s daily routine, leading your room to deliver high quality early years education and care for all children. You will plan, implement and review engaging activities that promote learning and development in line with the EYFS, ensuring every child thrives in a safe, stimulating, and inclusive environment.

In this role, you will support and guide other practitioners’ model best practice, and help maintain strong, positive partnership with parents and carers. You'll be responsible for completing accurate and up-to-date observations assessments and records.

In the role of Senior Early Years Practitioner, you'll be:

• Leading the staff within the room on providing learning programmes for individual or groups of children appropriate to their needs and developmental stages in accordance with Early Years legislation and guidance.
• And find support children with emerging or established special educational needs, working closely with family’s staff external agencies and professionals to ensure each child's needs are understood and met.
• Ensuring the compliance and application of nursery policies and procedures and relevant legislative requirements, informing management immediately of any instances of non-compliance or variations in practices.
• Contributing to and participating in the wider nursery management through leading on specific areas of development within the nursery, as directed by the Nursery Manager.
• Preparing and supervising dedicated areas/rooms within the setting on specific working patterns through planning, monitoring of outcomes, managing ratio of children, and the provision of a stimulating and appropriate range of activities whilst ensuring health and care needs are met.

In the role of Senior Early Years Practitioner, we're ideally looking for someone who has:

• Level 3 early years and childcare qualification e.g., NNEB, CACHE, NVQ Level 3 in Childcare and Education.
• A thorough knowledge of children's developmental needs from 0 to 5 years.
• Experience working and leading in an early year setting.
• Strong planning, observation and reflection of children and their learning.
• Effective communication skills across multiple age groups.
• Paediatric First Aid qualification.

Spring Cedars is a friendly welcoming nursery in Exeter, providing high-quality care and early years education for children from birth-five years. As part of Spring by Action for Children, we’re passionate about creating a safe, nurturing environment where children can learn, grow and thrive.

Imagine a place where laughter echoes, imaginations run wild, and every day is new adventure. At Spring Nurseries, where more than a collection of settings, we are a family, dedicated to nurturing children to thrive and supporting staff through a clear career pathway.

Whether this is a career change for you or the next step in your journey, we'd love to hear from you.

We work together to reach our mission to give children a healthy start in life.

Good luck! We can't wait to hear from you.

At Spring Oscars we're dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive, and authentic workplace. We actively encourage applications from Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic and disabled candidates as they are under-represented within the organisation. We want to take deliberate and purposeful action to ensure equal opportunity to all groups.

Male staff are often under-represented within this sector, and we would like to encourage more male applicants for our roles.

We arecommittedto safer recruitment practices to protectourservice users; therefore, all applicants are expected tohaveanunderstandingof andcommitmenttosafeguarding best practice.

Please note we are unable to offer visa sponsorship for thisrole.